Dr Ruwan Epa has received the 2022 Kaye Merlin Brutton Bequest Award to advance cancer treatments

Dr Ruwan Epa, Research Fellow from the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute and School of Chemistry, has been awarded the Kaye Merlin Brutton Bequest Award to advance research into treating fibrotic liver disease.

The prize, named after Kaye Merlin Brutton who made a bequest to the Faculty of Science in 1984, is awarded annually to support research into cancer, diseases of the liver, ophthalmic diseases and defects, and angina pectoris.

Dr Epa’s research aims to improve particular drugs used to treat liver fibrosis and chronic liver disease, which affects millions of people worldwide.

The project will build upon his previous research and a recent discovery of a major metabolite of a hit compound which may help improve drug-like actions.

Dr Epa received his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He then went on to become a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University before joining the University of Melbourne's Department of Physiology in 1999.

In 2002 he moved on to work in several leading Australian biotech companies before returning to the University of Melbourne in 2018 and joining Professor Spencer Williams’ research group at the Bio21 Institute.